Radical Acts of Love. Janie Brown

vertebrae. This method is the most effective way to control post-operative pain, and Rachel could give herself extra doses of medication when she needed it.

      ‘Right now I’m doing great. Michael just stepped out for a bite to eat, so your timing is perfect. How about some Therapeutic Touch?’ she asked.

      ‘That’s why I’m here.’ I am always glad to offer something practical in a situation like this, when one can often feel helpless. Rachel and I had practised and taught Therapeutic Touch for years, and I had seen the technique relax countless people in pain within three to four minutes. I didn’t have to fully understand how moving my hands slowly from head to toe, a few inches above a person’s body, could have such a profoundly relaxing effect. ‘Has Michael still not learned how to do TT?’ I laughed at the standing joke between us. He was sceptical even though he had been a recipient of TT many times and always liked how relaxed he felt. The relaxation effect is independent of whether a person believes in the therapy or not.

      Anxiety fluttered in my stomach as I gently pulled down the bedcovers. I calmed myself by closing my eyes for a few minutes. I silently wished Rachel and everyone in the intensive care unit a good recovery. A familiar feeling of tranquillity washed through me as I placed my right hand under the sole of Rachel’s only foot, and my left hand gently on her ankle. I heard her soft exhalation as she began to settle. I held her foot for two or three minutes and imagined any tension flowing out of the sole into my hands, and down my body through my feet and into the ground. I then tiptoed to the head of the bed and began to slowly move my hands downwards in broad strokes, a few inches above her body, from the top of her head, down her torso to her left leg and foot, including the empty space that her right leg and foot had once inhabited. According to Dolores Krieger, the founder of this technique, if the practitioner is calm and grounded, the patient will relax more quickly than if he or she is anxious. I find the process calms me.

      I invoked the pod of orcas in my mind, and the ease with which they travel vast distances through space, and I wished that Rachel be graced with such ease as she learned a new way to move through her world. I watched the muscles of her face soften and her eyelids twitch as a dream passed through. Her breathing slowed and deepened as she drifted off to sleep.

      Rachel and I no longer go to the summer workshops together on Orcas Island but we connect by phone or email from time to time. We both lead busy, active lives. Rachel’s surgery was almost twenty years ago and her cancer has never returned.